What all we did this October

IN BULLETS-

1. Deer Park Institute and SIDH conference in Bir, Himachal Pradesh on Shiksha. In this photo here you see the head of SIDH, Pawan-ji along with Prof Sangal (IIT Kanpur )and his wife Rita, Soma Paul (IIIT, Hyderabad; also my roommate at DPI) and Manish Jain of Shikshantar
2. Scores of synergies emerged from this and we may work with at least a few of the people I encountered here.
3. Later in October there was the mental health mela organized by the PHFI- Public Health Foundation of India; in whose preparation we had contributed both at the IIC and at the Lady Irwin College
4. Meeting with Prof Narender Ahuja- 19th Oct at Electronics Niketan, CGO complex
5. Meeting with Prof Girishwar Misra- 25th Oct in his room in the university
6. Met the representatives of SEWA NGO from Faridabad

This is a view of the proceedings at the Lady Irwin College on 19th September 2011. Organizers were PHFI

Mental Health initiative

On 10th-11th October 2011 the Public Health Foundation of India observed the world mental health day wiht a two day program in the IIC, New Delhi..We participated in two programs- one each at the Lady Irwin College (September 2011) and the IIC

A major part of our work is in the area of mental health and we are in the process of setting up a whole arm of mental wellness titled- MANSA. Several academics, psychologists and senior people have been requested to be a part of this venture, which starts initially as a think tank venture. Hope to accomplish some serious things through this and by putting mental health in the domain of the community itself.

Hansadhwani's people 1

Hansadhwani's people are those folks who believed in the idea of Hansadhwani even before it could be shared with the world...while still in its infancy. One of them who bought the idea, by just listening to it over the phone is the young man who agreed to work on our website.

It is someone who is like this :) to believe in our ideas. A very bright young fellow, now married and heading a company called Altwebmedia (click link to know better) He was among the earliest to get on the bandwagon.
Thanks Ajay.

In Himachal- Sep-Oct 2011

At the  Deer Park Institute a conference was organized recently by collaboration with -SIDH to discuss issues regarding Indian Perspectives on Education- organized by the Deer Park Institute, Himachal Pradesh and SIDH. In this historical conference there were discussions about the traditional views of education with representatives from Mahayana Buddhism, Jains, HIndus- Chinmaya Mission, J Krishnamurty's school, Gandhiji's Nai taleem and scores of others from numerous places around the world-
It was a great experience and synergies seem to be emerging on all sides.

June 2011

Writing about what happened in June, in October is a bit late in the day. But since we did something that was not recorded anywhere making a note of it here-

1. Training of teachers of Katha schools
2. Meetings with Trustees and team of Bapu Trust Pune- www.bapucamhindia.org
3. Meeting with the local NGO at Curtorim, Goa- represented by Mr Ponsiano and Abhijit Prabhudesai: there is a possibility of some work with them in future, if we set out to do some work in Goa.

How we changed the way we stood in the World

At the time HansFon was founded we said it would be -nurturing the Arts. And accordingly all our stationery was printed and we kept telling all and sundry about that. But psychology has been a very central theme of all our work and as time went by we felt that the manner in which we are approaching the whole thing, it would not be sufficient to say we are merely nurturing the arts. What is different between HansFon and any other arts' organization?

That is where the idea took root and we started looking at psyche as the canvas on which we would be plotting all our effort. So slowly it changed and from the Arts, we brought psyche as the focus area of our work. So now we are saying that we are nurturing the Self through art. Self is a concept of the psyche or mann of the human. For us, as we saw it always and articulate more clearly now- the central theme is not art but the human. We are there in service of the human and art is just one of the human expressions. By training people in the arts or making them understand how to look at life by knowing their own artistic selves...we wish to contribute to people understanding themselves a bit better.

This was a much needed shift and it calls for a sigh of relief!

activating ourselves once again

We are already a year old as Hansadhwani Foundation- in fact, just a little over it. Since we are not in a position to write on our website about things that we keep doing, I thought this is a place we could be regularly jotting down a few things.
One important thing that I am beginning to learn is about social media strategy. Till two weeks back I did not even know the phrase! Now I know that all facebook, twitter etc are social media and that we need to learn how to use them to our advantage.
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/category/how-to/- This is a useful article I came across
And then this one here-http://nonprofitorgs.wordpress.com/2011/05/24/six-online-fundraising-tools-you-may-have-never-heard-of/
This article is titled, six fundraising tools you may never have heard of!
Is it any surprise we have not heard of them? Anyways, now that we have, we would like to understand them and assign them to their due slots in our work and lives. Thank you linked in.